I was at the old-age home (sorry, "retirement community") last week -- a place that gives me the creeps even though many of my friends and former colleagues seem to live there happily. (I'm on the waiting list but I hope that I'll never be constrained to move in.). I was there to eat lunch with an old friend. At the next table over (in the rather luxurious dining room) was a woman whom I knew slightly fifty years ago -- as a neighbor and as the mother of a Flatirons Elementary student. She's 89, a widow, and still healthy.
She (let's call her Ms. GK) initiated the conversation with this question. "Is your wife still alive?"
It wasn't the inquiry itself that took me aback. It was the casual way in which it was asked, with no more emotional resonance than, say, "do you want raisins in your cereal?" or, "is it raining outside?"
Which made me realize that Ms. GK -- and all her fellow denizens of the facility -- live in a world of "sole-survivors" where the deaths of spouses "were as plentie as Blackberries." Therefore, there is nothing noteworthy or remarkable for her to inquire about the status of a long time companion, especially when half of these husbands and wives have already kicked the old bucket.
Nevertheless, the lack of emotion, the cold bloodedness, the lack of euphemism, of Ms. GK's question produced in me a "take stock" moment. Whether in or out of the institution, hers is also my ninth-decade world.
But I do hope that I myself do not become quite so matter-of-fact about the death of friends and family.